For a half-hour before last night’s game, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban sat on the baseline openly chatting with Nets special assistant Kiki Vandeweghe. The blue-jeaned billionaire wasn’t consummating a deal for Jason Kidd, but mischievously tweaking the media for the sheer joy of it.

By the third quarter, Cuban must have wished he had gotten a trade done after Kidd put on a virtuoso performance. Kidd led a 101-82 rout so complete that at one point Cuban – on the Mavs bench – could only bury his face in his hands and rub his temples as if trying to massage an answer out of his brain.

Perhaps that answer is Kidd, the Nets’ captain who had 13 points, 14 assists and six rebounds. It was a sterling audition for one of the teams he would like to go to, though he insists there was no extra incentive.

“No. There’s no meaning,” Kidd said, referring to talk that he could be traded to Dallas. “It was just a game that we needed, after that whirlwind in Charlotte, to back that up and now get a win and prepare for Minnesota, but there was no added meaning to this game.”

Maybe, but if Kidd’s performance didn’t give him enough leverage, Mavs guard Jose Barea’s two-point, no-assist night standing in for injured Devin Harris should give Dallas more incentive to make a run at the veteran point guard.

With Dallas leading 36-25 in the second quarter, Cuban watched Kidd dissect his team. The guard had five points, five assists and four rebounds in a 30-4 run that put the Nets up 55-40.

By the time it got to 61-42 with 6:54 left in the third, Cuban’s countenance was one of despair – a far cry from the half-hour he spent laughing with old friend Vandeweghe, a Mavs assistant when he bought the team.

“We talked more about wives and kids than anything else. But we wanted to let everyone see us talk so you guys can freak out,” said Cuban, hesitant to gut his team by giving up three or four players, and loath to deal Harris.

“He can be a top five point guard. I don’t think there’s any question,” said Cuban. “There’s always somebody better, always an opportunity for upgrade. But there’s not always opportunities to do it like (L.A.) got (Pau) Gasol; that’s the difference.”

Cuban insists he won’t let the Gasol deal – which he admits bothered him – or the Suns’ getting Shaquille O’Neal force him to deal for Kidd, whose $19.7 million salary further complicates things.

“It’s tough. It creates a problem,” Cuban said. “It’s tough when you take (even) two players off the team, Devin and (Jerry Stackhouse). You gotta look at the numbers.”

Those numbers may force a three-way deal, and the one discussed last week with Portland could resurface, or they could trade amongst themselves if Dallas includes Harris and a sign-and-trade with Keith Van Horn, who would just be an expiring contract.